


A Quick Trip to Tadfield

by HamishMcCat



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 01:43:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20592593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HamishMcCat/pseuds/HamishMcCat
Summary: Crowley takes a quite unexpected quick trip to Tadfield.





	A Quick Trip to Tadfield

In the days following the End That Wasn't the End (Crowley had taken to calling it Dooms Didn't) and their subsequent trips to the other’s home office, Aziraphale and Crowley had been enjoying their new found freedom. There were no more clandestine meetings in St. James's Park, just afternoon walks. There were no more “Alternative Rendezvous Point Number Whatevers”, except as a reference points to where they were meeting that day. 

This particular afternoon had brought them back to the bookshop. Though Aziraphale no longer needed to hide Crowley's presence by closing the shop early and shuttering all the blinds, he did anyway. This allowed Crowley the comfort of taking off his glasses without running the risk of causing a small riot if any customers were to actually wander into the shop. Crowley tossed his glasses on the counter next to the cash register that hadn't contained money since the shop opened, and headed towards the back room. 

“Angel, what are we going to be drin…” Crowley was asking over his shoulder when he was suddenly brought up short. His feet refused to move and acted as if they were glued to the floor. Eyes widening in panic, _Is this Hell coming for me? Already?!_ He tried desperately to pull himself free. Then he saw the circle of light beginning to form around him.

“What the….” And the light blinded him. 

In the seconds before he could see again, Crowley braced himself for the oncoming fight. _A summoning circle. _He had heard plenty of stories about them, but had never personally been victim to one. Attempting to summon Crowley or even Crawley would never had worked, they would have needed to know his true name. Not even Aziraphale knew that. 

“....fuck!” Crowley finished the sentence he had begun in the bookshop moments earlier. Every muscle in his body was coiled tight, ready to spring into attack. What he was not prepared for was the sight that greeted him.

“Adam?” Crowley balked in disbelief. Because there he was. The eleven year old former-antichrist staring at him with a grin of self-satisfied triumph as well as a bit of disbelief that the summoning actually worked. Dog was lying quietly on the sofa, seemingly unimpressed with the sudden appearance of a demon in Anathema’s sitting room. 

“Crowley?” Anathema had come rushing in from the kitchen when she felt the surge of magic. 

There was a flurry of footsteps from down the hall and Newt appeared in the sitting room doorway.

“Anthony?” Newt had taken to calling Crowley by his first name after they were formally introduced on Dooms Didn't. This was because Newt believed that once you’ve faced the End of the World together, you were automatically on a first name basis. This assumption was backed up by the fact that Crowley only ever addressed him as “Newt”, but this had more to do with the fact that Crowley very much enjoyed saying the word “Newt” than any sort of familiarity he felt toward the man. 

Adam opened his mouth to add to the chorus of names, and Crowley felt it. There, forming in Adam's brain, quickly making its way to his lips. Quickly, perhaps more quickly than he had ever moved in his life, Crowley was across the sitting room, pressing his hand over Adam's mouth.

“That,” his demon eyes were filled with fear and pleading as he addressed the boy, “is a name that has not been mine in over 6,000 years. Please… please do not use it.” He paused, slowly, cautiously removing his hand from the boy’s mouth. “Especially not around Aziraphale.”

Crowley's eyes widened. “Aziraphale. He must be in a panic.” Crowley pushed past Anathema, into the kitchen, grabbing the receiver of the phone mounted on the side of a cabinet. He did not need to dial, he wasn't even sure if he knew the bookshop’s number, he simply willed the two phones to connect. 

Aziraphale picked up before the first ring was completed. 

“Aziraphale!” Crowley cried into the receiver, genuine relief in his voice. Thank Whoever that he hadn't already gone running off to try and save him from the clutches of Hell. 

There was a muffled cry at the other end that sounded to the humans, who were now all gathered in the kitchen, like Aziraphale had shouted Crowley's name. 

“Angel, Angel, listen, I'm fine…..Angel…. Angel…”

There was a pause as Crowley half listened to Aziraphale’s frantic ramblings, not being able to get a word in. He gestured at the phone receiver while rolling his eyes at the people watching him. 

“Angel, lisssten!” Crowley hissed into the receiver, a demonic command laced into his words that finally got Aziraphale to stop talking. 

“Angel,” he says firmly, “I’m fine.”

A pause as he listened. 

“Tadfield…I’m IN Tadfield... no, I'm in the witch woman's cottage...” he took a moment to allow his demon eyes to take in the kitchen of Jasmine Cottage, “...no, no, it wasn't her….” he responded to Aziraphale's questions, his eyes locking on Adam’s. “Adam was the one that summoned me.”

Receiver tucked between his ear and shoulder, Crowley came around the kitchen table and stood in front of Adam. He nodded a couple of times at whatever Aziraphale was saying on the other end. He reached down and took Adam's chin in his hand and looked deep into the boy's eyes. “...no, no…” he said, gently turning Adams head to the left and then the right, examining him for any signs of latent Antichrist-ial power.

“He still seems perfectly human to me, ” Crowley concluded, letting go of Adam's chin and lightly, but awkwardly, cautiously, ruffling the boy's hair. _Though he still knows a damn sight more than he ought to, _he thought to himself. 

“I think he was mucking around with one of the witch woman’s books….” Crowley made an irritated sound and rolled his eyes, for all the world like a teenager that has just been asked by their parents to do their chores. “....How on Earth am I supposed to know what book?” His long legs were already striding back to the sitting room and to the site of the summoning, portable receiver still pressed tightly to his ear. As the humans followed the demon, Newt would have sworn Anathema had a corded phone at the start of this conversation. 

With an annoyed sigh, Crowley swooped down and scooped up the book that was still lying open on the floor and squinted at the title. 

“_The Care and Keeping of Demons and Devils: A Guide to Infernal Husbandry and The Placation of Abyssal Beings_ by Doctor Ignaceous Goodfellow” Crowley read, and then turned to Adam with a look of incredulity and disgust, removing the phone from his ear, “_The Care and Keeping of Demons_?!”

Adam shrugged, unphased by Crowley's anger. “I honestly didn't think it would work.” 

Crowley took a moment to look at the makeshift summoning circle that Adam had assembled. The circle appeared to have been drawn with ordinary sidewalk chalk and the candles he used were a mixture of tea lights, scented candles, and the sort that you find in emergency kits. If it had been any other human being in the entire world, Crowley doubted that it would have worked. He had to admire the boy's ingenuity. There seemed to be some talent left in him yet. 

His admiration was cut short by the sound of Aziraphale trying to catch his attention through the forgotten phone receiver. “Sorry Angel, what was that?.....” Crowley spluttered in annoyance, “....What edition? _I _don't know! That's your department, not mine!....”

Crowley set down the book and headed back towards the kitchen, the three humans following, not wanting to miss a word of this half-heard conversation. 

As quickly as it had taken hold, the annoyance slipped back out of Crowley's voice. “Listen, Angel, why don't you just head up here to Tadfield. You can take a look at the book, see what Adam did, and get it all sorted.”

Now that the subject of the book had been dropped, Crowley's tone shifted, as though he was trying to make a panicked person see reason. It seemed that the angel’s initial panic at the demon’s very sudden disappearance was returning. 

Anathema felt that she should be annoyed that her house was being invaded, first by Adam who wanted more reading material, then by the demon who Adam summoned, and soon by an angel, who the demon was inviting without consulting her. But she couldn't be. She was an occultist through and through. What occultist could possibly ever pass up tea with this odd trio?

“No, really, I am fine, it was just a bit unexpected…” Crowley rubbed his hand over his face and realized for the first time that he did not have his glasses. “Listen, Aziraphale, my glasses didn't make trip. I must have left them at your place...yes, on the counter...could you be a dear and bring those up with you, hm?” With Crowley's tone, the humans were not sure if he said the last bit with more sarcasm than affection, or more affection than sarcasm. 

“...No, they don't seem to mind at all…” He looked at the three people watching him from the kitchen table, and his yellow eyes settled on Newt, who couldn’t seem to hold his stare like the other two, “.... actually, I think I might be freaking Newt out a bit…”

Just for fun, without breaking eye contact with Newt, Crowley stuck out his forked tongue. Newt started, Adam's eyes widened like it was the coolest thing he had ever seen, and Anathema reached for her notebook and started jotting something down. 

Then, in response to something at the other end of the phone, Crowley made an annoyed growl, “Of course I won't go out without them! No need to have the locals getting out their pitchforks. Honestly, what are you expecting?! ‘The demon, the witch, and the Antichrist all walk into the pub’?...”

Anathema can't help but laugh at the idea of what R.P. Tyler would have to say about that. Crowley raised an acknowledging eyebrow at her laughter. 

“...look, Angel, I’ll stay in the witch woman's cottage until you get here. I’ll be perfectly safe…” Crowley cradled the receiver in between his shoulder and his ear and searched through his coat pockets. He pulled out a mobile phone that he had forgotten about in his rush to contact Aziraphale, which he now laid on the counter in front of him. “...Angel, take my mobile with you…you know how to use it, you just don’t _like_ to use it...” He waved his hand vaguely over the phone, which vanished. “...it has both Anathema and Newt’s number in it, and the cottage’s…” He waved a hand quickly again, with an ever so slightly guilty expression, like he should have thought to add their numbers before sending it. 

The humans stared, amazed at this display of demonic power. Though Adam had had the power of the Antichrist, and they had all three witnessed truly miraculous things, it was quite another thing to see these “minor miracles” performed on your kitchen counter with all the ease of turning on a light switch. 

“It's like being in Vegas!” Newt whispered in amazement. Crowley glared at him with a raise of his hand that silently said _What the fuck are you on about? _Newt clamped his jaw shut. 

Crowley snapped his fingers. “Angel, you better get going, your ride is just pulling up out front of the shop….Yes….Yes….No….Soon….”

The conversation seemed to be trailing off into just monosyllabic responses and Anathema worried that any moment they were going to start in with “No, you hang up first.”

Crowley though had no issue with hanging up the phone without a proper goodbye and hung the receiver back up on the cradle. It was a corded phone once again for no other reason than Crowley found hanging a phone up was ever so much more satisfying than pushing a button. 

Crowley turned and declared to his audience, as though they had not been listening to his whole conversation with rapt attention, “Aziraphale is on his way. And he will have…” Crowley snapped his fingers again, “...no traffic, so he will be here soon. In the meantime,” Crowley said as he strode back into the sitting room and sprawled himself across the entirety of Anathema's sofa, with an air of practiced indifference. “Adam Young,” he drew the boy's name out as he said it, “why in the name of bloody blue Dick Turpin have you summoned me?”

Adam’s eyes met the demon’s slitted yellow ones. After having faced down Satan himself, nothing about the fact that Crowley was a demon scared him; his nerves came from being an eleven year old asking an adult (or at the very least a much much older being) for help. Adam swallowed and reached for _The Care and Keeping of Demons and Devils_. 

“Well, it's about Dog. He hasn't been as obedient as he was when I was...well, you know. Anathema had this book and it has a section about taking care of hellhounds. It says that demons are the only ones who can really command them. I just figured, you might...maybe have some advice…about Dog that is.”

“Ahhhhhhh,” Crowley drawled, “the taming of the hell beast. Yes. That could be fun.” Crowley and Dog regarded one another, yellow eyes meeting black. Way back, back in the very very back of those canine eyes Crowley could still see the lingering red. 

Dog cocked his head to the side, unsure if “fun” is the word he would have chosen. 


End file.
